Standing Alone In A Crowded Room
by amandajbruce
Summary: Even when they're in the same place, Jemma misses Fitz.


For ifwehadamonkey for the FitzSimmons Secret Santa, who prompted: Jemma pines for Fitz.

Thanks are in order to notapepper and StarryDreamer01 who both read through and helped me edit and were general sounding boards when I got stuck.

Titles for the different sections are borrowed from a Taylor Swift song, "The Story of Us" which I realized was oddly appropriate after having already written the story.

-o-

**Standing Alone In A Crowded Room**

-o-

Jemma knew things would be different when she returned to the Playground, and she knew that there wasn't really any going back to the way things were before. She tried to respect that, she really did, but she still found herself making two cups of tea more often than not, butting in on conversations in the lab, and hovering around the edges of the place Fitz had built for himself with the others.

After being forcibly reminded that when she was around him, his hands shook just a little bit more, his focus wandered just a little bit further from the task at hand, and his eyes stayed on her more than the work he was doing, she in turn forced herself to pull back.

She didn't join him in the lab every morning with her customary second cup of tea.

She didn't sit next to him on the sofa when he joined her and Hunter for football games.

She steered clear of the lab when he was in there more often than not.

She steered clear of the garage when he was in there, especially if he was in there with Mack.

She even stayed away from the television when Fitz and Mack (and sometimes Koenig) were playing video games.

Until she didn't.

-o-

**_I used to know my place was the spot next to you._**

-o-

"Good morning, Mack. Fitz."

She nodded her head at the two of them, something twisting in her chest when Mack gave her a raised eyebrow in response and Fitz's eyes snapped to hers, wide and curious. Her heart thumped hard against her ribcage, but she calmly set the two cups of tea in her hands down in front of them. They were bent over a station in the lab, clearly examining the blueprints for something, but she didn't ask what it was, she didn't say anything about work, just turned to Mack and added, "I wasn't sure how you take your tea, so I made it the same way Fitz likes his – lots of sugar."

She gave him an awkward half smile, nodded her head at Fitz again, and hurried over to a different station to get started on her own work. She felt Fitz's eyes follow her to the other side of the room, but when she snuck glances at him for the next hour, he was very easily working with Mack. She only noticed trembling fingers once, and his stuttering seemed to have calmed tremendously. Instead, she used her sneaking glances to notice how bright blue his eyes appeared when the plaid of his shirt matched it just so, the way the stubble along his jawline made him look older, the way her heart sped up just a bit when his mouth would quirk into something almost akin to a smile when Mack would crack a joke. There was a moment where she happened to sneak a quick peek over at them, only to find Fitz's eyes on her with an intensity she wasn't expecting considering he had Mack working over his shoulder.

The slide she was working with slipped from her grasp and clattered to the table. She pursed her lips together and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Everything okay over there, Doctor Simmons?"

There was something in Mack's tone that was different than the way he'd been talking to her for the last few weeks. He didn't sound annoyed with her, like he needed to protect Fitz from her. It was more like he was amused. Yes, she decided, it sounded like he very much wanted to laugh at her and was holding back from it. What on earth could he possibly think was so funny about her dropping a slide?

She was trying to do the right thing here. She was trying not to notice that Fitz was watching her like she was the center of the universe every time she least expected it and thought things were on the verge of returning to the way they were before.

"Fine," she called to him, picking up the slide, which, after careful examination, she hadn't damaged, and began the process of setting up the microscope all over again.

-o-

"Morning, Mack," she called cheerfully, stepping over a piece of equipment on the floor. She wasn't entirely sure what it did, but then, she'd never been all that well versed in automotive mechanics. She set the cup of tea in her hands down on his workbench. "Fitz," she added, plopping another cup down next to him. Fitz braced his hands on his lower back and tilted his head to the side in response.

She was most definitely not noticing the way the muscles in his forearms pulled tight when his fingers clenched in his cardigan. And she most definitely did not notice how his eyelashes appeared almost gold in the light that was shining on him.

"Thanks, Doc," Mack responded without looking up from the engine pieces littering the bench. It was the fourth day in a row she'd brought them tea, and Jemma thought he was probably getting used to it.

She nodded her head to both of them, and then turned and left the garage quickly, feeling Fitz's eyes on her the whole way. She wasn't expecting, when she returned to the kitchen and picked up her own mug, to hear a throat clear behind her. Turning around, Jemma found herself face to face with Skye.

"Just so you know, uh, Fitz has been drinking the peppermint tea since you left. Says he likes the way it smells." She reached out and gave Jemma's arm a reassuring squeeze before she continued, "I saw you kept making him that weird hibiscus stuff. Thought you might want to know." Skye moved around her and poured herself a cup of coffee while Jemma just nodded awkwardly.

"Right." _He should have just told me, _she thought to herself, but didn't say the words aloud because, _of course he wouldn't because we've barely said two words to one another since I couldn't tell him why I left. _

"And Mack doesn't really like tea. I don't know why he keeps taking it from you. He likes coffee."

"Oh." _Probably pouring it out as soon as I leave the room. _Jemma shook her head slightly. _What a waste, and when it's so hard for us to get supplies regularly too._

"No sugar, just some of that vanilla creamer Bobbi keeps buying whenever she's on the supply run." Skye winked at her and took her coffee to go.

"Well, then." Jemma shook her head and sipped from her own mug before heading into the lab.

-o-

Jemma nervously twisted her hands in front of her before she walked into the room. Apparently, there was such a thing as "boys' night" since she left. She didn't want to get in the way, but she really wanted her tablet, which was currently sitting on a side table, just next to Koenig's couch, right in front of the television where video games were going on.

Okay, maybe she didn't exactly _need_ her tablet to finish the experiment she was working on. But she would feel _better _if she had it. And she could see what the guys were up to. Especially since she and Fitz had barely spoken to one another in three days. She just wanted to see him. See how he was doing. That was all.

A loud chorus of boos sounded from the group of men in front of her, and she wrinkled her nose. A light chuckle followed, one that she recognized, so she took a breath and walked the rest of the way into the room, keeping her head slightly bent as she made her way to the side table.

"Oi, Simmons. You any good at this?" Hunter asked her just as she reached the table and picked up her tablet.

She glanced up to find him seated on the floor in front of her with Fitz. Mack and Koenig sat behind the two of them on the couch, and she briefly wondered why Trip wasn't invited to this "boys' night," but he came bounding into the room with a bowl of popcorn a split second later, dragging a chair with him. He raised an eyebrow at her in greeting, a flicker of amusement crossing his face before he masked it.

"Erm – not really?"

A smattering of gunshot noises echoed from the speakers attached to the television.

"Mmm." Hunter scowled and took a swig of the beer bottle on the floor next to him. "I was hopin' you could give me some tips. Fitz is literally killing me."

"I think you mean - " Jemma began.

" - figuratively," Fitz finished.

"Geniuses," Hunter muttered to himself.

He didn't seem to notice that the two of them had stopped speaking and were staring at one another wide eyed. Fitz ducked his head, and Jemma looked down at her own feet, a half smile on her face.

"Jem –" a throat cleared, "Jemma likes games where no one – no one – dies," Fitz explained softly, his eyes going back to the television. His fingers missed the button he was aiming for, and an explosion occurred on screen.

"Yes. That is true." Jemma nodded her head and hugged the tablet to her chest. "But…" she leaned closer to Hunter and mock whispered when Fitz glanced over at her, "Fitz can't resist the extra challenges, they distract him from the shooting sometimes."

Mack smiled at her. "I thought you didn't play."

"I'm just not very good at those kinds of games," Jemma said, standing back up to her full height. "Have fun."

She made it to the doorway before she heard Hunter's voice, the unmistakable tone that usually accompanied gossip lacing it, "So, you and Simmons –" but he was cut off by some slight shuffling. "Bloody hell. What was that for?" he spluttered.

And though she didn't look back, she imagined Triplett threw something at him, probably popcorn, as it was his voice that answered with an "Are you gonna play or not?"

-o-

"Good morning, Doc," Mack said before Jemma could even open her mouth.

She bit down on her lip and flipped the pancake in the pan in front of her, then gave him a tight smile when he walked up to her side and poured himself a cup of coffee.

"Hungry?" she asked brightly when she saw Bobbi and Fitz trailing behind him. "I made blueberry pancakes."

Bobbi's lips twitched in something that stopped just short of a smile. Everyone seemed to be doing that around her these days. "Looks like you made enough to feed an army of Macks," she joked, clapping the man on the shoulder.

"I woke early," Jemma explained, shrugging her shoulders and busying herself with removing the pancake from the pan and adding it to the impressive tower on a tray next to her.

"Uh –"

Mack didn't get a chance to finish as a sweaty Trip and Skye bounded into the room, fresh from a six AM workout with May.

"Pancakes. Thank God. I'm starving." Skye grabbed one off the stack, rolled it up like a taco and started eating in the middle of the small kitchen. Trip did the same. "What?" she asked around a mouthful of pancake. "I'd like to see the rest of you keep up with May on no dinner and four hours of sleep because yesterday's mission ran long."

"Blueberry?" Trip asked as he took another one. "My favorite." He took another bite, swallowed quickly and turned to Fitz. "Yours too, right?"

-o-

"Morning, Doc," Mack called to her before she even made it all the way into the garage.

"Good morning," she answered breezily, placing a cup of coffee on the table in front of him before turning to Fitz and handing him his.

"Morning," Fitz said to her, eyes opening wider after he took the first sip of his tea. "Peppermint." She couldn't place the expression on his face as he stared at her, something close to surprise was there, but there was another emotion lurking around the edges, and it made warmth settle in the pit of her stomach.

Jemma nodded and turned back to Mack. "And Skye told me how you prefer your coffee." Mack chuckled a bit. "You could have said you didn't like tea," she told him primly.

"Didn't want to hurt your feelings," Mack deadpanned before lifting the mug to his lips and taking an experimental sip. "It's good." He nodded his head at her and she turned to leave. "Hey, Doc?" She waited patiently, not turning around. "A few of us are going to play cards tonight. You in?"

"Oh. Erm – if you're sure it's all right?"

"Why wouldn't it be alright?"

She stopped herself from snapping that she suspected he didn't like her very much.

"Okay then. I'll see you later."

-o-

"I heard you joined the boys for cards last night," Skye said as she rinsed off her plate and set it in a rack to dry.

"Bobbi was there too. It wasn't just the boys."

Jemma leaned against the counter and watched Skye work. She used to be very cavalier about dish duty, maybe because they had never had that many dishes to wash on the plane, but now she very carefully scrubbed off the plates, rinsed, and placed them gently in the rack to dry, barely any movement evident in her except for her arms. She was becoming more and more like May every day.

"Bobbi cleaned you all out, right?" Skye grinned.

Maybe not that much like May.

"I won a few hands. Hunter accused her of stacking the deck, but he couldn't prove it."

Skye was running out of room, so Jemma moved into position next to her with a towel and started drying the plates the other woman had already set aside with a towel.

"Is it weird for you?"

"What?"

"Being back. With so many new people."

"A little bit. But we need all the help we can get, right?" Jemma shrugged and made steady swipes across the surface of the plate in her hands. "You know what the first thing Hunter said to me when I came back was?"

"What?"

"I got shot because of you and you had to bring _her _back too?"

The two women laughed for a few moments before Skye grabbed a few more dirty dishes from the countertop.

"I know I said this before, but I'm really glad you're back," Skye told her, bumping her with her hip for good measure. "When you were gone, I didn't – none of us really knew – Coulson didn't tell us – and you know, he's doing better now."

"Coulson?" Jemma feigned confusion. "Yes, he seems to be much better now that he's got a path for those symbols."

"I wasn't talking about Coulson," Skye explained gently.

"I know." Jemma sighed. "No one ever is." She opened a cabinet and began to stack the dry plates inside. "But he's doing it all on his own."

"Yeah, cause you've been avoiding him."

"I have not-"

"Taking coffee to Mack every morning just so you can run into him for a second, making the whole team his favorite breakfast, popping in on boys' night - right, you're not avoiding him, you're just trying to _pretend_ like you are." Skye rolled her eyes.

"I'm just trying to be nice. And give him his space." Jemma stacked dishes as she spoke, her voice taking on a higher pitch with every word. "Besides – everyone knows about – well, everyone knows what they _think_ happened before."

"What did happen?"

Jemma closed the cabinet with a click and wheeled back around to face Skye. "He saved my life. And it hurt him. And he needs space. From me. To heal."

"Okay." Skye shrugged. "Whatever you say. You guys are the geniuses."

-o-

"I want to know why I always get stuck doing the bloody laundry," Hunter sniped on his way past Jemma and Bobbi. Bobbi had been attempting to explain how to balance her fighting stance, though the two were supposed to be cleaning up the makeshift gym.

"It's because you can't cook," Bobbi shot over her shoulder to him easily as she gently corrected Jemma's arms.

"Oh, not this again. Your burn one thing - "

"Completely beyond recognition. And you almost set the kitchen on fire."

"I didn't like that kitchen. It was an ugly shade of mustard yellow. Looked like vomit."

"Is this where you try to pretend you were going to burn it down on purpose?" Bobbi rolled her eyes at Jemma.

She bit down on a smile and took a step back from the other woman. "I'll trade with you if you want."

"And what's your assignment?"

"It's not laundry," Jemma said sweetly.

Bobbi laughed while Hunter scowled, but he shifted the basket in his hands to one side before he eyed her appraisingly. "Is it cooking?"

"No."

"Okay, then. Have at it." He set the basket on the floor in front of him and folded his arms over his chest. "What am I doing?"

Jemma held back a laugh while Bobbi scoffed. "You're helping Bobbi clean up the gym and clean out the old locker room so we can use it." She made her way over to him and picked up the basket, propping it easily on one hip while she tapped him softly on the shoulder. "Have fun. Don't put each other through any walls."

"Bloody - I thought you were supposed to be the nice one!" Jemma laughed and kept walking. "I want a new deal!" When Jemma shook her head, he added somewhat smugly, "the only clothes left to wash are Turbo's and Mack's."

"Turbo?" The name slipped out before she could stop it. _Who was Turbo? _

"Your engineer." Hunter paused, and she could swear he was laughing at her when she turned around to look at him, eyebrows practically up to her hairline. "Make sure you don't use too much soap. Mack has sensitive skin."

Her jaw dropped in indignation and she turned to Bobbi for help, but the other women was already nodding her head in agreement.

"He really does. You don't want to mess up all that pretty."

"You think Mack's pretty?" Hunter asked before Jemma could respond.

"You don't?" Bobbi countered.

Jemma sighed and left the room.

-o-

She wasn't entirely sure how it happened, but swapping out laundry for cleaning chores with Hunter became a regular thing. He _really _hated folding things, said it brought back bad memories of living with Bobbi. And she really liked being alone with the sound of the rotating drums of the machines and the whoosh of water through the pipes. It helped her think when she was stuck on a particularly difficult problem in the lab.

It also meant that she could have a moment of peace where people weren't either shooting her sympathetic looks when Fitz walked by her without speaking, or knowing ones when she was making tea and coffee for him and Mack in the morning.

She wished she knew whatever it was that they knew.

The drum of the dryer slowly tumbled to a stop, and Jemma opened the door to begin removing the clothing inside. Last load of the day was the one she was dreading delivering, just a bit. Very carefully, she folded sets of trousers and t-shirts. It was a lot of grey, a lot of black, and a little blue. She missed the days when their clothing was colorful and bright and patterned with polka dots and stripes.

It was hard to hide in the shadows though if you were wearing primary colored collared shirts and bright orange ties.

_And the blue really does do amazing things for his eyes._

She picked up the pile of folded clothing, one last jumper draped over the top, and made her way back through the maze of halls to the bunk Fitz was using. He preferred his bunk on the Bus, but with it being used more and more for missions, he'd taken up residence in one of the Playground's rooms instead.

Standing in front of the closed door, Jemma shifted her weight from foot to foot. If she'd had a free hand, she would have been pulling on the collar of her shirt or tucking her hair behind her ear because like it or not, Fitz, of all people, made her _nervous. _

_When did that happen?_

She took a breath and raised one hand awkwardly around the clothing in her arms, and knocked.

When there was no answer, so sound of movement, she knocked again.

She chewed on the side of her lip, not sure if she should open the door and set his clothes inside or not. After a moment's indecision, she decided walking in unannounced was probably not the best way to go. Instead, she placed Fitz's things neatly on the floor in front of the door and turned away.

-o-

It was another night with Coulson shut up in in his office and May out gathering intel, and Jemma, yet again, had nothing in the lab to do that couldn't be handled by the half a dozen technicians that always seemed to be underfoot.

She very quietly, almost as quietly as May if she did say so herself, tiptoed her way through the Playground, trying to find some way to be useful. Instead, she stopped just outside the door to the room that housed what she often thought of as Koenig's television now. She didn't see it as anything else since he was always on it playing video games with one of his brothers or one of the men on the team. He invited Skye and Bobbi to play, but both had said they'd rather practice with real guns after a couple of rounds of being soundly beaten by Koenig and Hunter.

Mack was sitting there in the dark by himself, the volume of the television turned way down low as a series of explosions rocked the screen.

"You can come in, Doc," he called to her.

_Maybe we've all picked up a few things from May._

"Sorry," she told him as she shuffled into the room, the swish of her sweater against the arm of the couch sounding louder than the gunfire of the game."I didn't mean to interrupt. I was just - done for the day."

Mack hit a button that must have paused the game because everything on the screen froze.

"You want to play a few rounds?"

"I don't really - "

"Turbo's not here. He's practicing something for Coulson. I was just tryin' to clear my head. See if I can come up with another way to convince him to let me work on Lola. You know, he's got her locked away. It's a shame."

She chewed on her bottom lip, a bad habit she was starting to think she might have picked up from Fitz at the Academy, and took a seat, keeping her back straight and her hands in her lap, trying not to show how uncomfortable she was.

"What do I do?"

"You're going to push that button to shoot, this one to run, and this one to jump. Okay?"

"Okay."

He handed her the controller and unpaused the game.

"Who do I shoot?"

"Everyone."

-o-

**_Now I'm standing alone in a crowded room and we're not speaking._**

-o-

"What are we, twelve?" Skye joked when she saw a new piece of paper Coulson had just posted to the wall in the tiny kitchen of the Playground.

"Skye," Jemma started with an exaggerated sigh.

"No, I know," the other woman cut in, "chores are like rules. You like rules. _They make you feel nice_." Her words were in a horribly accented version of Jemma's own voice, but Jemma wasn't amused.

"Ugh. Terrible." She shook her head. "Actually, I think it makes sense, given that we're the only ones at the base on a regular basis. With so many other people coming and going, we need to keep everything in order."

Trip walked up behind them to peer over their shoulders at the wall where Coulson stood. His hands were clasped in front of him, and he had that stern expression on his face that made him look like a school principal instead of the leader of an organization of spies.

"Sir?" Trip asked, ignoring the way Skye elbowed him to try and get his attention.

"Everyone's not here yet," Coulson responded, settling back on his heels to wait.

Predictably, it was Hunter who was the last to arrive, Fitz having been sent to fetch him from the depths of the building.

"There's not more alien graffiti, is there?" Hunter asked loudly, crossing his arms over his chest.

Jemma looked beyond him to where Fitz was standing, staring resolutely ahead at Coulson. It looked like he might have ironed the jumper she'd left him. He looked less rumpled than he had the last week or so. Strangely, she found herself missing that just-rolled-out-of-bed appearance. Her eyes trailed down the sleeves of his jumper to his hands, which were slowly curling and uncurling in the hem, like he was anxious, not wanting to keep still. He never did like to wait for any sort of briefings, even if he was one of the most patient people she'd ever seen when taking a device apart and putting it back together. Allowing her gaze to move up to his face, she found that he was watching her expectantly, and she jumped, turning around to face Coulson again.

"Simmons? Something to add?" Coulson questioned at her jump.

"Erm - " She realized she hadn't been listening at all. "No, sir. I think a chore chart is an excellent idea."

"Are we sure _she's_ not an alien?" Hunter whispered loudly to Mack on the other side of the room. Several people turned to glare at him. "Only joking."

-o-

"Have I mentioned I hate cooking?"

"Yes, Skye. You've told me once or twice now."

"Like - I think I hate cooking as much as May hates coffee. Is that possible?" She pushed a knife into a carrot as she spoke.

"I've found just about anything is possible," Jemma answered quietly, turning off the oven timer before it could ring. She hadn't even known the oven had a timer until Skye started playing with it.

Skye picked up the handful of carrot slices and tossed them on top of the bowl of salad in front of her. "Are you sure you don't want me to do anything else?"

"You hate cooking," Jemma deadpanned as she reached for oven mitts.

"I also hate slicing carrots," Skye mocked stabbing the table with the knife.

"Well, it's good that everything's done then."

"Really?"

Skye spun around and peered over her shoulder just in time for Jemma to open the oven and get a blast of heat. "Really," she grunted, pulling out the roasting pan and placing it on the table.

"Guys," Skye yelled at an earsplitting volume, "food's done!"

Jemma winced at the yell, but it did the trick for everyone who was close enough to the kitchen to hear her, and most of the team trickled in and began to help themselves.

"A proper roast?" Hunter sniffed the air in surprise. "Huh. Might make up for you bringing the she-devil back with you." He walked around the kitchen, peeking into other dishes as he did. "What's this?" A smirk made its way across his features. "Oh, Mack's going to love this," he chuckled as Fitz and Mack strolled in.

"What?" Jemma and Fitz asked at the same time, eyes meeting across the room before looking away from one another just as quickly.

"Oi, Mack! Simmons made your favorite."

"Quinoa," Mack groaned.

"You don't like quinoa," Jemma remarked flatly. She pursed her lips and turned away from him, only to find herself staring at Fitz. She swallowed.

Fitz fiddled with an edge of a paper towel on the small space of countertop in front of him before speaking. "Everything looks - it looks great." There was a twitch at the corner of his mouth, like he was just about to smile at her, but his attention was caught by something behind her.

"I thought it was Skye's night for dinner," May remarked as she strode by them and grabbed a plate.

"Oh. Yes. Well," Jemma began, only to be cut off.

"You want Skye cooking on her own? She's almost as bad as Hunter," Fitz responded for her.

"Hey!" Skye protested.

"I heard that, mate."

It was the first meal Jemma had actually enjoyed in weeks.

-o-

"Someone's in trouble."

Jemma looked up from the notes in front of her to see Hunter leaning casually against one of the lab tables. In the lab. Hunter never came in the lab. She was almost positive Fitz had told him he shouldn't be around sensitive equipment.

"I haven't done anything," Fitz responded immediately from the table across from her where he and Mack were going over one of his old weapon designs. It was nice that Fitz had claimed the work space directly across from hers again. She didn't like it when he worked at the opposite end of the room.

And she wasn't letting it distract her. Not at all.

"I don't think he's talking about you, Turbo."

Mack and Fitz both turned and looked at Jemma.

"What? I haven't done anything."

"You lot are a paranoid bunch." Hunter paused dramatically. "I meant the favorite. Skye. She went off on her own on the mission. Again. She's up with Coulson now."

"Oh, is that all?" Jemma asked before looking back down at her tablet. "She's not in trouble. Skye does that all the time."

"She was cornered in an alley before I caught up with her. Whitehall's people could have taken her out," Hunter countered. "I think the director's head almost exploded."

"He worries," Fitz responded. Out of the corner of her eye, Jemma saw him go back to his design as well, but Mack and Hunter were both shaking their heads. "Skye'll be fine."

_At least we can agree on one thing these days._

"Say, Mack? You on inventory with me for what we confiscated this time?"

"I am."

"I will bet these two our inventory duties that Skye gets in trouble."

"Oh, please. What's Coulson going to do? Ground her? Skye's a very capable agent. The job isn't without –" Jemma broke off when she glanced over at the other table again to see Fitz watching her curiously. "-risk," she finished lamely, a series of risks they had all taken running through her mind. She reached up and tugged on her collar self-consciously. "We all do things in the field we shouldn't. It's not like you've never made a mistake in the field."

"Excuse me?"

Mack smirked and Fitz's eyebrows shot up, but Jemma forced herself to pay attention to Hunter and not how much she enjoyed the look of surprise on Fitz's face instead of barely concealed sadness. Maybe she should snap at people more often.

"You were going to shoot me."

"I thought you were Hydra."

"Still. You knew Coulson had someone on the inside."

"I'd never met you before."

"What." Fitz's voice was flat and his eyes were narrowed when she turned back to him. The amusement and surprise had vanished into something else.

"Oh," she whispered, her stomach sinking a little. "You hadn't heard that was why May shot him?"

But Fitz wasn't looking at her. "You almost shot her?"

"It was an honest mistake," Hunter said, hands held in front of him, no longer feigning casualty at the anger on Fitz's face. "She was wearing a Hydra jacket, talking to that kid. How was I supposed to know?"

"I'll take the bet," Jemma broke in, trying to diffuse the tension that had suddenly stretched through the room. "Skye gets in trouble, I'll do the inventory. Fine."

Fitz shot his gaze over to her, eyes still narrow, but his face softened. "He was going to shoot you?" he asked again.

Jemma didn't know what to say. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, and unlike the last couple of weeks, she couldn't seem to break his gaze.

The sound of petulantly stomping boots echoed as Skye flounced her way into the room and dramatically threw herself onto a stool. "Ugh. Coulson said I'm grounded. No missions for the next week. What are we, children?"

"Ha! Inventory!" Hunter called, pointing at Jemma before bolting from the room when Fitz glared at him again, leaving his clipboard on the table.

"I'll just go do that then," Jemma mumbled, looking at the ground, the table, the clipboard, anywhere but at Fitz.

She almost missed it when he said, "I'll help."

She didn't miss the grin on Skye's face though when Fitz followed her out of the room.

-o-

Inventory, Jemma found, was a rather boring affair, even if she got to stare at Fitz bent over boxes and flicking through their contents for a few hours with no interruptions. When he finally sat down on the floor in the middle of a bunch of crates, all of them half open, their contents scattered haphazardly around him, she was hit with an image of a much younger Fitz before everything went wrong, seated on the floor in her dorm room at the Academy as they prepped for an exam.

He had let his hair go, too consumed with projects and experiments to care that he was sporting a cloud of curls and frizz on the top of his head, and she had made him take a break from explaining his latest theory about the modifications Tony Stark had made to his newest suit to let her trim the curls back.

The memory only presented itself because of the way he was throwing everything around him. He didn't look the same. Not really. A part of her wanted to ask who had trimmed his curls back for him now because it certainly wasn't her. She had a feeling he wouldn't let her near him with anything sharp right now.

He looked up at her and rattled off the name of the bullets in the boxes, and the counts, not even a stutter, no trembling in his right hand, though he kept his left in his lap. The smile he aimed in her direction as she listened intently was soft and shy, and its mirror curled across her own face.

_Maybe inventory's not so bad._

-o-

Tucking one strand of hair behind her ear as she walked, Jemma made her way in the direction of her bunk, intent on turning in for the night. Breaking up a new Hydra hideout meant long hours. And she was ready to just collapse into her small bed and call it a night.

The hall was quiet.

If she was a suspicious person, she would call it too quiet, but she knew everyone else was either in Coulson's office debriefing or removing materials from the bus. Except for, of course, the one person who was opening the door to the bathroom just in front of her. She took a step back out of the way to avoid running headlong into –

"Fitz. Hello."

He hadn't gone out with the team either. Instead, he'd been making minor repairs to one of the vehicles. Last she'd seen him, he'd been covered in a thin layer of grease and oil and whatever else had come out of the car when he was under it.

Not that she had spent a good five minutes staring at him through the window into the garage before one of the lab technicians whose name she really needed to learn had got her attention. That would be ridiculous. She had been _thinking. _Certainly not staring.

"Jemma."

He held a towel in his hands in front of him, fingers twisting in the fabric as they often did these days, but he didn't walk past her. She tried not to follow the movements of his fingers when he brought one of his hands up to run through his damp curls. She also tried not to inhale deeply and let the scent of his shampoo reach her. She definitely was not paying close attention to the way the t-shirt he was wearing was damp from the steam in the bathroom. And she most certainly was not letting her thoughts run to the fact that he had clearly just taken a shower and what she would have seen if she had happened to walk this way just a few moments earlier and gone into the bathroom. Nope. Not at all.

"I was just – erm – heading to bed," she let the words spill out, tumbling over one another, her voice high, approaching shrill really. She really needed to get that under control.

"Me too."

"Okay then."

She took a step back, nearly tripping over her own two feet and stopped just short of rolling her eyes at herself.

_What is wrong with me?_

"Goodnight," she muttered, quickly starting to walk away.

"Jemma?"

His voice was so tentative, she almost missed her name, but she spun on her heels once it registered.

"Hmm?"

"Isn't your bunk that way?" He pointed over his shoulder, his lips pulling into a real smile.

"Right. It is. Just. Going to get a cup of tea first. Yes."

_Oh, hell._

-o-

"What the bloody hell are you doing in here?"

Jemma turned her head at the sudden outburst from where she was curled into the metal chair by the "garage" doors. The influx of light from a switch being thrown made her eyes burn. The garage space was empty seeing as how the Bus was somewhere over the Pacific Ocean right now.

"Nothing." She curled her hand around her mug of tea. "Just. Having some tea."

Hunter eyed her suspiciously.

"In the dark?"

"Don't be such an ass," Bobbi snapped as she came up behind him from the hall.

Jemma raised her eyebrows in surprise. Bobbi's tone was snarky with Hunter as usual, but her hair was mussed and her lipstick was slightly smudged. She'd also missed a button on her flannel shirt. Jemma decided not to say anything about it. This time.

"It's Fitz's first mission back," Bobbi reminded Hunter, smacking his shoulder with the back of her hand.

"No, it's not." Hunter pushed Bobbi's hand away from him, but Jemma caught that his eyes seemed to have lost a bit of their usual hardness when he did it. "He helped me keep from blowing up the Bus while you two were off having your Hydra fun."

"Hydra wasn't exactly what I would call _fun_," Bobbi shot back.

"No one told me that," Jemma responded before they could begin arguing.

"Yeah, well, Coulson seems to run missions on a need-to-know basis. Didn't tell any of us you were undercover, did he? Don't even know what he's up to with Trip and Skye in Hawaii, do we?" Hunter moved away, and Simmons heard the opening and closing of a refrigerator, the clinking of bottles as he grabbed beers.

"And Fitz."

-o-

Jemma was startled awake in the uncomfortable metal chair a few hours later by May's whisper.

_How did I even manage to fall asleep here?_

"Simmons. I need you. Now."

She jolted to her feet, ignoring Mack who was now in the garage space, tinkering with something she couldn't see, and followed May up the stairs to Coulson's office. Coulson's face was on the wide screen of the monitor on the wall. There was blood on his shirt and he appeared to be waiting _very_ impatiently.

"Doctor Simmons," Coulson said, his voice carefully measured, and the worry pushed onto her chest like bricks. "I need you to talk us through repairing a cut to the brachial artery."

Jemma's throat closed in on itself and she didn't respond.

"We've got it clamped, but we need to close it off completely. We can't fly all the way back like this. I don't have a qualified surgeon on the bus. Can you do that?"

She nodded, even though her lungs were expanding and contracting at an alarming rate. She began to list the supplies he would need, holding off her panic, and someone outside of the camera frame must have begun gathering them because Coulson nodded his head to whomever it was that she couldn't see. The list helped her calm down.

"Sir? Is it - " She couldn't even bring herself to say it.

"We ran into some trouble. Trip handled it, but he was shot and the doctor who helped him sliced open his artery to buy himself an escape route." Coulson started to pull on a pair of gloves, and Jemma knew there was something in that story he was leaving out, but she had a feeling it likely wasn't medically relevant.

Fitz stepped into frame, gloves already on his steady hands, and he nodded to the camera. Jemma hated herself a little bit for sighing in relief that he was all in one piece while another teammate was stretched out on a table just beyond the bottom of the frame.

"Jemma?" Fitz asked. "Tell me what to do."

-o-

**_I don't know what to say since this twist of fate when it all broke down._**

-o-

"I've never been so bored in my life," Skye's voice groaned. "And I lived in a van."

"Yeah, well I've never been sidelined from the field for this long. It was just a scratch," Trip commented.

Jemma shook her head. With the threat of Hydra, and both of them not be allowed out in the open, they were going stir crazy. She didn't have to see their faces to imagine the twin looks of annoyance on them. They might have sounded like they were complaining about the down time, but she was willing to bet they were both draped over chairs indulging in junk food like they did every time they went easy on their training. Antoine "my body is a temple" Triplett was surprisingly easy for Skye to sway with the promise of chocolate and potato chips. They were lucky May and Coulson were out trying to drum up new recruits and weren't listening to the whining.

"A scratch," Jemma muttered aloud as she entered the room to find, as predicted, Trip lounging in a chair, Skye perched on the arm and several of their other team members seated around them.

"Getting shot and having your brachial artery severed... not really just a scratch," Bobbi said before taking a swig from her beer.

_Why do we keep buying beer? Shouldn't we be buying other useful supplies? Maybe Koenig has a distillery hidden somewhere on site._

Pulling Jemma from her thoughts, Bobbi added, "You were lucky Fitz was able to stitch you back up."

"Just did what I was told," Fitz cut in softly. He was holding his beer bottle gently in his hands, fingertips lightly drawing patterns in the condensation.

"Don't sell yourself short, mate. I've never had to stitch someone up like that." Hunter held out his own beer bottle and clinked glasses with him. "Not that I'm saying I couldn't." He looked pointedly from Bobbi to Trip. "I mean, I don't think I would have let you bleed to death."

"Thanks, man," Trip said sarcastically while Skye chuckled.

Fitz shook his head, pulling the bottle closer to himself and biting his lower lip.

"Not to mention, I heard you kept the Bus from blowing up a while back," Bobbi added in, smiling encouragingly at him as Jemma crossed her arms over her chest. "Skye said you figured out they were walking into a trap with that ice kid too."

"He did," Skye and Trip said in unison.

"Sounds like you're a regular Mr. Fix It to me."

"Yeah, he's pretty good," Mack agreed, entering the room behind Simmons and catching the beer Hunter tossed to him with ease. He settled on the sofa next to Fitz.

"No. I - no. It - it wasn't like that. Not - not really." Fitz leaned back in his seat, one of his hands stretching up to swipe at the back of his neck.

Jemma sighed. This was the first time she'd heard the hesitation and stuttering from him in weeks when he was speaking with other people. She had a feeling she knew where this was going.

"Yeah, okay, Fitz. You didn't repeatedly save our collective asses the last few months. It was someone else," Skye teased with an eye roll before taking a long pull from her drink.

"No." Fitz shook his head again, eyes wide, agitation clearly growing. "I didn't. Hunter had to fix the Bus. I - I couldn't - I couldn't do it. My hands." He clenched his left hand around the beer bottle tightly. "And Ward. It was Ward. Ward knew it was - it was a trap." He swallowed.

"You," Jemma cut in angrily with a shake of her own head, taking a couple of steps closer to the group. "You have got to stop doing that."

"Saving everyone?" Skye joked, but Jemma wasn't listening to her.

"Fitz, you are so amazing." Jemma exclaimed. When he just shook his head in response again, she added, "you keep doing all these things that no one else can do and you act like it's nothing. It's _something_."

"But I'm not. Not like I was. I can't -" Fitz broke off in annoyance, like he couldn't find the right word, something that hadn't happened to him in over a week. "You weren't - you weren't there. You don't know."

"But I do know. Last year, you saved my life, and you acted like it was all Ward. You know I couldn't have made that antiserum without you. And you helped save Skye. And you saved May. And you created the beacon for Fury to find us when - you know."

"He really is Mr. Fix It," Bobbi cut in.

He was still shaking his head, but Jemma kept going. "Hunter knows nothing about electronics or avionics. You had to tell him how to fix the plane, I'm sure." She glanced over to Hunter for confirmation and when he nodded his head, she put her focus back on Fitz and continued, though a bit more gently. "And after everything he did to us, you still went down to speak with Ward. Alone. That couldn't have been easy."

"You weren't there," Fitz repeated. "You don't. You don't know what - what happened."

But she plowed right on, "And stitching up Trip? You never would have done that a year ago. The smell of blood used to have you running out of the lab, not to mention actually seeing it. Fitz, you performed major surgery on a flying plane with nothing but my instructions, and you did it with perfectly steady hands after having the use of just one for months. And Trip is basically as good as new." She tore her eyes away from Fitz again to silently encourage Trip to chime in.

"Yep. Good as new. Coulson's just being extra careful. You did a great job, man."

Fitz shook his head again, and Jemma huffed out a breath in frustration.

"Oh, I get it now," Hunter said to himself. Jemma turned her head to find Hunter pointing at her with his beer bottle, though he was looking in the other direction. "She's the girl," he remarked to Mack. "Why didn't you tell me that?"

Jemma sucked in a quick breath and looked back at Fitz whose mouth was opening and closing but no sound was coming out.

"Definitely not bored now," Skye whispered to Trip.

"Yeah…." Trip trailed off. "You know what, though? We should do a perimeter check."

"What? Why would we do that? We have alarms here!" Skye protested as Trip attempted to haul her off the chair with one arm, wincing when Skye's weight pulled on his shoulder. "Alarms go off when someone tries to break in! We can stay right here."

"No, Trip's right. Alarms can be countered," Bobbi agreed with a sharp nod of her head and a quick glance at Jemma. "Hunter, you're with me."

"Why do I have to go with you?" He grumbled as she latched on to his arm, practically dragging him from the room.

"Because you're the idiot that said _she's the girl_," Bobbi hissed at him while they walked.

"But she_ is_ the girl. Did you _all_ know? And no one told me!"

Mack swiped up the half empty beer bottles and tossed them, before grabbing Skye's other arm and bodily removing her from the room.

"Guys," Skye laughed, "I get it. I'm not resisting, really… also, we should check the camera feeds, make sure they're all working."

"C'mon, girl," Trip groaned. "You are not spying on them."

The silence that surrounded them when the rest of the team was gone seemed somehow louder than any of the peanut gallery comments Jemma had been allowing to go in one ear and out the other. She took another breath, uncrossing her arms and pulling the sleeves of her blouse down over her fingers.

"Fitz?" She asked softly. "What did he - What Hunter said - what did you tell him?"

"Just that - that you left," Fitz answered, studiously avoiding her gaze by staring down at the bottle in his hands.

"But - he said -"

"I know what he said, Jemma."

She picked at the back of the chair in front of her, but she didn't say anything else for a long while, just watched him watching his beer.

"Did you think," she paused, trying to choose her words carefully, "that I left because of what you said to me? Before?" She knew that he had been feeling useless without his usual skill set, but she also knew that Mack was under the impression that she had rejected Fitz. Making him feel unwanted had never been her intention.

Fitz's silence was the only answer she needed.

_Jemma, you are an idiot. _

"Fitz, you have got to understand that isn't why I left."

"You still - you still haven't told me. Why." He finally looked up at her, and his expression was more guarded than it had been lately.

"Because there was a mission." She shook her head. "That's not true." Taking a breath, Jemma forced herself to get the words out that she'd only said to Mack, "There was a mission, yes. Coulson and I talked about it. I was the best candidate to go. But I could have said no. He could have found another way in. I took it because I knew that I was making you worse."

"You weren't -"

"Yes, I was, Fitz. I tried to help, but I just kept getting in the way. I couldn't be what you needed. You had to work through it on your own. And the mission meant I could still do something good for the team. So I took it." She shrugged, and shuffled around the chair to collapse into it, staring at her feet. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I left like that."

"You don't - Jemma." He waited until she met his eyes. They were bright and earnest. "You don't make me worse," he told her without any hesitation. "You make me try harder."

"Your hands don't shake anymore unless you're around me," she said quietly, her focus zeroing in on his hands, holding ever tightly to the bottle in his lap.

"That's not - "

"And you haven't had difficulty with speech unless - "

"Jemma, that's not - " Fitz let out a breath in a huff of frustration, sounding like the adolescent she'd met years ago at the Academy. "That's got nothing to do with the hypoxia."

"Oh." Jemma's cheeks colored slightly at his words. "Right. I see. I wasn't thinking." She peered at his face cautiously. "I'm sorry."

He shrugged, but there was no hint of embarrassment or distress on his face. Instead he had that same intensity in his eyes that usually had her looking in the other direction because she was too nervous to hold his gaze. It was like she was something precious, the most important thing in the room. It made her stomach flip.

_Who's the teenager now, Jemma?_

She smiled.

"What?"

"Has anyone ever told you that you tend to wear all of your feelings right there on your face?"

Fitz let out a short laugh and bounced his knee, his fingertips fidgeting with the beer bottle again while she watched him. "Well, you certainly don't. Anymore."

"Yes." Jemma nodded her head slightly before tilting her head to the side, cataloguing every bounce of his knee and movement of his hands while he stared at her. "I suppose I should work on that." At Fitz's quizzical expression, she slowly added, "showing you how I feel."

-o-

"Morning, Doc," Mack said as she walked into the lab.

"Morning," she murmured. He wasn't usually up this early. She didn't say anything for a moment, waiting for him to ask about what happened the night before, but he didn't. If it had been Skye or Hunter, they would have been expecting the story. Mack seemed content to just let things be, and she liked him a little bit more for it. "I was on my way to the kitchen. Coffee?" She asked him as she grabbed her tablet from its charging station and began flicking through the results from an experiment the day before.

"Nah. Someone already beat you to it." He held up his mug in one hand. "I'll see you later. On my way to the garage." He had his own tablet in hand, and Jemma could just make out what looked like the design for Lola's thrusters.

"Coulson's letting you work on Lola?" Jemma tried not to let the surprise through, but she knew it must have showed considering Mack's chuckle.

"Guess the boss finally trusts me." Mack winked at her.

She rolled her eyes as he moved for the door, but there was no malice in it.

"Yours is at your table," Mack called to her over his shoulder.

"My what?" She turned to her usual work station and found someone there waiting for her, a cup of tea in front of him. "Fitz."

"Morning." He picked her cup up from the lab table and held it out to her. When she took it from him gratefully, he asked, "what are we working on today?"

"You're not working on Lola with Mack?"

Fitz shrugged. "Not today."

She took a sip from her tea. It was, unsurprisingly, perfect. He hadn't made her tea in months, but he still knew her favorite and exactly how she took it. Setting the tea down, she held out her tablet to him, letting him see what she was looking at. Instead of taking it from her, he leaned a little closer, looking at the images on the screen over her shoulder. She held her breath while he read through the results, and when he began swiping the images on the screen with his finger and rattling off what the different results meant, she exhaled slowly, the smile on her face wide and bright.

She turned her head to watch him while he spoke, but he wasn't looking at the tablet anymore. Instead, he was staring at her in a way that probably would have had them kicked out of the lab at the Academy when they were kids. She had told him that he had a habit of letting all his feelings through, but it was different when she was this close to him. It was the kind of expression that could knock a woman off her feet if she wasn't careful. She pulled in another breath and cleared her throat.

She could do with a little less being careful.

"Ready to get started?" Fitz asked, his smile stretching wider when she didn't look away.

"Ready."

-o-

**_Next chapter._**

-o-

"Fitz, I'm telling you, my chemical analysis is correct. There are no mistakes in the formula."

"Well, yeah. Of course you'd blame me. But there's nothing wrong with the delivery mechanism!"

Jemma rolled her eyes and began arguing with Fitz on the merits of the new instant-paralysis bullets they were working on. With new gifteds popping up all over the planet, and many of them not affected by the ICERs, Coulson had tasked them with developing something stronger.

"I think I liked them better when they weren't talking," Hunter sighed to Mack.

"You think this is bad? This is nothing. They had a two hour debate yesterday while Fitz was supposed to be helping me with the fuel leak for the Bus. You know what it was about? Physics at Hogwarts." Mack shook his head and wiped his hands on the rag he was holding. "They ended up deciding they were both wrong. Because of magic." He sighed.

The two scientists were completely oblivious though, inching closer to one another, arms waving around animatedly while Jemma insisted that the chemical should work, and Fitz countered that obviously, it wasn't working because the casing for the bullet dissolved in skin, just like it was supposed to, but that nothing happened to the person who was shot.

Hunter's face screwed up in a grimace as Fitz leaned too far into Jemma's personal space to be comfortable for anyone else. "I'm still not entirely sure if they're actually together or not, but do you get the feeling science is foreplay for them?"

"I am not talking about someone else's foreplay with you. We aren't that close."

"Right."

Jemma's attention was pulled by the word "foreplay," and she halted her explanation of the chemical reactions. Fitz's face was an odd shade of pink as he took a step back from her, so she was fairly certain he had heard them too, however far in the periphery their conversation was.

"Erm – maybe I should run the test again, just to be sure," she told him. "You're supposed to be helping Mack. I've taken up enough of your time." She chewed on a corner of her lip. "I'll – erm – let you know if I find any irregularities."

"Yes. Good." Fitz nodded his head and crossed his arms, holding himself much more stiffly than he had a moment ago.

"Huh. Maybe not," Hunter mock whispered. "I think we embarrassed them."

"I think you embarrassed them," Mack responded, picking up a wrench from his work bench. "I'm just trying to do my job."

"You brought up the physics debate."

"I didn't call it foreplay."

Jemma let out a little huff of annoyance. _Honestly, they're worse gossips than Skye. _She knew that if she left things this way now, Hunter would likely say or do something to make Fitz even more uncomfortable as soon as she was out of the room. Fitz's eyes strayed to the door as if he was looking for a way out.

"Oh, for goodness sake," she muttered to herself before reaching up to grab him by the shoulders and pull him in close, planning to press a quick kiss to his mouth before she returned to the lab. She wasn't expecting Fitz to uncross his arms and settle his hands on her waist or for him to make that sound in the back of his throat that always made her knees weak or for his teeth to graze her lip just so.

When she finally pulled back from him, her vision may have gone a little hazy and she had trouble remembering why she was leaving in the first place.

_Work. Lab. Toxins. Paralysis. Right, Jemma._

"All right then," Fitz said slowly, a smile stretching across his face. "I'll – ah – see you in the lab later."

"Right. Okay." Jemma nodded her head quickly, then worried she might look like one of those plastic bobble head toys. She was now thoroughly distracted and not entirely sure how she was going to do the chemical analysis all over again.

As she walked from the garage, she could hear Hunter clapping.

"Well done, mate."

_Absolutely worth it._

-o-


End file.
